The internet could soon be made obsolete by a new "grid" system which is 10,000 times faster than broadband connections.

Web could collapse as video demand soars Scientists in Switzerland have developed a lightning-fast replacement to the internet that would allow feature films and music catalogues to be downloaded within seconds.

advertisementThe invention could signal the end of the dreaded 'frozen screen', when computers seize up after being asked to process too much information.

The latest spin-off from Cern, the particle physics centre that created the internet, the grid could also provide the power needed to send sophisticated images; allow instant online gaming with hundreds of thousands of players; and offer high-definition video telephony for the price of a local call.

David Britton, professor of physics at Glasgow University and a leading figure in the grid project, believes grid technology could change society.

He said: "With this kind of computing power, future generations will have the ability to collaborate and communicate in ways older people like me cannot even imagine."

The power of the grid will be unlocked this summer with the switching on of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a new particle accelerator designed to investigate how the universe began.

The grid will be turned on at the same time to store the information it generates, after scientists at Cern, based near Geneva, realised the internet would not have the capacity to capture such huge volumes of data.

The grid has been built with fibre optic cables and modern routing centres, meaning there are no outdated components to slow the deluge of data, unlike the internet.

There are 55,000 grid servers already installed, a figure which is expected to rise to 200,000 within the next two years.

Professor Tony Doyle, technical director of the grid project, said: "We need so much processing power, there would even be an issue about getting enough electricity to run the computers if they were all at Cern.

"The only answer was a new network powerful enough to send the data instantly to research centres in other countries."

Britain has 8,000 servers on the grid system, meaning access could be available to universities as early as this autumn.

Here in this hopeless fucking hole we call LASome say the end is near.Some say we'll see armageddon soon.I certainly hope we will.I sure could use a vacation from thisBullshit three ring circus sideshow ofFreaks.

Yes, the LRC could be disastrous to the entire planet! There's no conclusive report saying it will be 100% safe when turned on!

I have mixed emotions about it. I realize you have to step out of the box with innovation and science to evolve but something this risky that has the potential for destroying our whole planet is really a bit much.

It is CERN that publicised the World Wide Web project in 1991.

Here in this hopeless fucking hole we call LASome say the end is near.Some say we'll see armageddon soon.I certainly hope we will.I sure could use a vacation from thisBullshit three ring circus sideshow ofFreaks.

Re: Spawned from CERN Large Hadron Collider ---New "Grid" Internet to be 10,000 times faster than Broadband!

I wonder what kind of data is processed for CERN, why the need for so much bandwidth? Maybe they need it for video conferencing?

Quoting: Anonymous Coward 409006

I think it's for the immense data they will be transferring.

Here in this hopeless fucking hole we call LASome say the end is near.Some say we'll see armageddon soon.I certainly hope we will.I sure could use a vacation from thisBullshit three ring circus sideshow ofFreaks.

Re: Spawned from CERN Large Hadron Collider ---New "Grid" Internet to be 10,000 times faster than Broadband!

Is it "Large" because it's a collider of Large Hadrons, or because it's a Large Collider of hadrons?

Quoting: Anonymous Coward 318022

I don't know...it's a Swiss thing.

Here in this hopeless fucking hole we call LASome say the end is near.Some say we'll see armageddon soon.I certainly hope we will.I sure could use a vacation from thisBullshit three ring circus sideshow ofFreaks.

Re: Spawned from CERN Large Hadron Collider ---New "Grid" Internet to be 10,000 times faster than Broadband!

One of the replies to the news article was from South Korea, the guy said it was no big deal, they already have 100MB service for ONLY $30 US dollars a month!!??

geez, I feel like I'm getting totally screwed with my DSL setup then.

Quoting: Anonymous Coward 404272

Asians have all the technology before North America, Europe or Australia. I've heard that they are sometimes 2-4 yrs ahead of us!

Here in this hopeless fucking hole we call LASome say the end is near.Some say we'll see armageddon soon.I certainly hope we will.I sure could use a vacation from thisBullshit three ring circus sideshow ofFreaks.

"The Grid Physics Network, or GriPhoN, joins LIGO and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey with the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European accelerator laboratory. They form a computational and communications grid that ties together resources from the United States and Europe.

We expect that advances in developing petascale virtual data grids made in this project can be extended to other components of our nascent cyberinfrastructure.

Finally, we will see here how a networked system might bring data from all wavelengths and from ground and space-based telescopes to an international community of astronomers through a National Virtual Observatory.

Here we are watching the network at work - the integration of data from different wavelengths and from different telescopes, both in space and on the ground.

The virtual observatory will ultimately change the way science is done. For example, it will bring together the "separate wavelength cultures" and it will bring science to desktops around the globe.

These examples demonstrate that the demand for resources to archive, manipulate, and extract knowledge from databases is expanding at an accelerating rate."

"The LHC is being constructed at the CERN laboratory in Switzerland. The facility will consist of a superconducting particle accelerator providing two counter-rotating beams of protons, each with energies up to 7 TeV (7x1012 electron volts). ATLAS and CMS are being constructed to characterize the reaction products produced in the very high energy proton-proton collisions which will occur at intersection regions where the two beams collide. The LHC will enable a search for the Higgs particle, the discovery of which will be an important step in understanding the origin of mass of the known elementary particles, and will test the very successful Standard Model, which provides the existing framework for what is known about elementary particles and their interactions. The LHC will also enable a search for a new set of particles, predicted by a powerful theoretical framework known as supersymmetry, which will provide clues as to how the four known forces evolved from different aspects of the same "unified" force in the early universe.

The two LHC detectors will provide partially redundant and partially complementary information aimed at maximizing the chance of discovery. Both detectors will operate at extremely high data rates, which will push the state-of-the-art technology of electronic triggers, data acquisition, and data analysis. LHC experimenters in the U.S. are leading efforts to develop innovative "data grid" technologies that will allow them to analyze data from their own workstations as if they were at the LHC. Development of U.S. computational resources to fully exploit the opportunities that the LHC will present is currently being carried out with support provided through the Physics Subactivity within the Mathematics and Physical Sciences Activity."

Re: Spawned from CERN Large Hadron Collider ---New "Grid" Internet to be 10,000 times faster than Broadband!

While I like the sound of a new internet 10,000 times faster than now, does it really have to come from something that could potentially destroy the planet with the flick of some switches? Not a very good tradeoff, IMO.

Re: Spawned from CERN Large Hadron Collider ---New "Grid" Internet to be 10,000 times faster than Broadband!

While I like the sound of a new internet 10,000 times faster than now, does it really have to come from something that could potentially destroy the planet with the flick of some switches? Not a very good tradeoff, IMO.

Quoting: Anonymous Coward 406956

That's what I'm saying. I have mixed emotions!

But I guess if we wanted to just come down on CERN entirely because of the LHC, then we should all just log off now and never use the internet again because they were instumental in it's development!

Here in this hopeless fucking hole we call LASome say the end is near.Some say we'll see armageddon soon.I certainly hope we will.I sure could use a vacation from thisBullshit three ring circus sideshow ofFreaks.

Re: Spawned from CERN Large Hadron Collider ---New "Grid" Internet to be 10,000 times faster than Broadband!

I once had the opportunity to tour Brookhaven National Labs here on Long Island.

The physicist I spoke with was really quite brilliant and I very much enjoyed his company.

What he did impart on me (this was before they started smashing gold) was that every time a higher energy level was reached someone was scared and not entirely without good reason but their going to do it anyway, it's what physicists do. I think they really enjoy it.

From a statistical viewpoint, the probability of a cataclysmic event goes up and down at the same time for each new energy level depending on how you look at it.

Re: Spawned from CERN Large Hadron Collider ---New "Grid" Internet to be 10,000 times faster than Broadband!

The particle called the Higgs boson is the quantum of one of the components of a Higgs field. In empty space, the Higgs field acquires a non-zero value (or non-zero vacuum expectation value), which permeates every place in the universe at all times.

Re: Spawned from CERN Large Hadron Collider ---New "Grid" Internet to be 10,000 times faster than Broadband!

Higgs boson in fictional prophecy [wikipedia]

In Stanis&#322;aw Lem's Solaris, a space station crew deals with an inexplicable presence of other people, including absent or deceased friends and relatives — apparently the creations of an alien phenomenon they are studying. They discover that their visitors, when killed, always return to life, even if they attempt to kill themselves. (In the novel, these "ghosts" are described as being constructed from long-range energy fields derived from bound states of neutrinos.) In Steven Soderbergh's 2002 film adaptation, the script has a reference to Higgs bosons, absent in the original: "So, if we created a negative Higgs field, and bombarded them with a stream of Higgs anti-bosons, they might disintegrate."

In Herman Wouk's A Hole In Texas, the real science behind the Higgs boson is used as a backdrop for a satire on Washington politics, the chase for funding in scientific communities, and Hollywood blockbusters. In fact, the Hollywood portion of the satire has much to do with the wild flights of fancy in evidence in many of the other entries on this list. A Hole In Texas is a novel by Herman Wouk. Published in 2004, the book describes the adventures of a high-energy physicist following the surprise announcement that a Chinese physicist (with whom he had a long-ago romance) had discovered the long-sought Higgs boson. Parts of the plot are based on the aborted Superconducting Super Collider project.

The particle also appears in other, non-narrative art forms: Frank Zappa's posthumously released album Trance-Fusion contains an instrumental track called 'Finding Higg's Boson'.

In Richard Cox's The God Particle American business man Steve Keeley is thrown out of a window and falls three stories, but wakes up and begins to see the world in a different way--he is able to accurately predict future events, read others' thoughts, and manipulate his environment.

In Robert J. Sawyer's Flashforward an experiment at CERN to find Higgs particle causes the consciousness of the entire human race to be sent twenty years into the future.

Re: Spawned from CERN Large Hadron Collider ---New "Grid" Internet to be 10,000 times faster than Broadband!

I think everyone would agree that CERN is not an evil organization, that they've done many truly great things for science and technology. But yeah, the LHC is a pretty big limb to step out on considering the possible (if remote) chances of it destroying the world.

It's kinda funny, people talk about the end of the world from nuclear war, asteroids, super volcanoes, pole shifts, or whatever, but those actually will "only" destroy human civilization for the time being. The LHC could literally DESTROY THE PLANET. And it's happening, and it's not based on woo-woo alarmism. And yet it doesn't get the same attention as the other more sensationalist doom stuff (although attention has been increasing as the startup nears).

Re: Spawned from CERN Large Hadron Collider ---New "Grid" Internet to be 10,000 times faster than Broadband!

A Hole in Texas review from Publisher's Weekly

Wouk, now nearly 90, has license to write what he pleases: in this case, a light, sprightly story about lost love, high-energy physics and the machinations of Washington. At 60, physicist Guy Carpenter is happily married and the father of two, including a new baby. In the late 1980s and early '90s, he worked on the Superconducting Super Collider, a gigantic federally funded project in Texas aimed at finding the elusive Higgs bosun subatomic particle. Congress pulled the plug on the SSC in 1993 in real life as well as in the novel professionally stranding Carpenter and leaving the Higgs bosun undiscovered. Ten years later, Carpenter has gotten his life back in order, but when a group of Chinese scientists publish a paper claiming to have discovered the Higgs bosun, his quiet existence is upended. Not only was Carpenter a key staff member on the SSC, he has sustained a secret romance since graduate school with Wen Mei Li, the chief scientist on the Chinese team. This confluence of circumstances puts Carpenter on the spot with his wife, the media, Congress and possibly the CIA. It also introduces him to a former movie star congresswoman, who's charmed by his intellect and sympathetic to his plight. The plot is busy but secondary to Carpenter's banter and romantic escapades. Occasionally corny but also playful, thoughtful and passionate, this first novel by Wouk in 10 years will charm fans with its companionable warmth and wry humor.

Re: Spawned from CERN Large Hadron Collider ---New "Grid" Internet to be 10,000 times faster than Broadband!

The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear (1991)

guest appearances by President George Bush, first lady Barbara Bush, and Chief of Staff John Sununu

Lt. Frank Drebbin returns to save the day once again. This time he's out to foil the "big boys" in the energy business. A top scientist (Dr Mainheimer) is about to publish his report on energy supply for the future. Things don't look good for the traditional suppliers; oil, coal and nuclear. To save their industries, the suppliers kidnap Mainheimer and replace him with a decoy with a more favourable report.

Yes, the LRC could be disastrous to the entire planet! There's no conclusive report saying it will be 100% safe when turned on!

I have mixed emotions about it. I realize you have to step out of the box with innovation and science to evolve but something this risky that has the potential for destroying our whole planet is really a bit much.

It is CERN that publicised the World Wide Web project in 1991.

Quoting: Skeptical Believer

And it could be bad for the planet how, exactly?

Look, nature bombards the planet with higher energy particles every day, and nothing has happened.